In November 2021, I presented a virtual poster at the conference of the International Society for Developmental Psychobiology. For the virtual presentation, I made a short lightning talk, which I wanted to share with you.
If you have any questions about this research project, let me know!
Are you interested in the heritability of sleep and cortisol? In this video, I explain the findings of my paper Actigraphic sleep and cortisol in middle childhood: A multivariate behavioral genetics model
Updated: Jun 20, 2022
If you are not yet an expert in the academic twitter game, have a read!
Last week, when I was at a conference in Belgium, I listened to a talk about “why to use twitter”. When I talked to colleagues, they told me that they either do not have a twitter account, or never use it to post something. To be honest, I am also not (yet) a very active twitter user. However, we all should be. In this blog, I will show you WHY you should use twitter as a scientist and HOW you can use twitter.
Networking
When you follow (and are followed back by) other researchers either from your own university or across the world, it will be so much more easier to make contact at a conference or by sliding into their DMs. Some time ago, I replied to a tweet about a colleague whom I never met in real life. He sent me a message thanking for my kind tweet and we got to talk about our research interest, attendance at a conference in the summer and even possibilities in the future to work together.
Academic reputation
The feeling of publishing a paper is great, after so much work and possibly revisions. However, not a lot of people read your paper (if it is not some ground breaking finding). By using twitter, you can share blogposts explaining your research, share your paper, important figures and so on. As soon as your research catches the attention of fellow researchers and colleagues, it is also more likely to be featured in the press or at conferences. Added benefit: people will get to know you as a researcher and are more likely to get into contact for future collaborations.
The brain of many
Do you need to find a good questionnaire about a certain topic? Or are you looking for datasets that you might use in your next project? Ask for it on twitter. If your followers don’t know, they can easily retweet and you will reach a huge audience without any effort. Also, scanning through the tweets of others will often provide you with new insights, new research ideas and often also new job opportunities. Just scrolling through my twitter page, I already have seen 4 or 5 postdoc positions I found extremely interesting (just a pity that I am not finished yet to apply for those positions).
The How-to:
If I convinced you to use twitter, now is the time to take the next steps.
Sign up! Choose a username that is close to your actual name as it makes it much easier for other researchers to find you and follow you.
Your profile: Upload a profile picture so others know that it is you and not a bot. Also upload a nice header (often used: previous publications or a photo while giving a talk at a conference). Share a short description of your research interests. Also, add your website link if you have a website
Follow other people: you can find interesting researchers by searching for specific keywords (e.g. parenting). You will see all users that use this word in their bio. Also, there is a “Who to follow” box on twitter giving mostly good recommendations.
Tweet: tweet about whatever you want, it also does not have to be purely scientific. You can tweet pictures, GIFs, video, text, emojis, links or all of the above. You can also tag other twitter users (co-authors for example).
Interacting with others: You can like tweets of others, you can re-tweet tweets (with or without a comment) and you can reply to tweets. For a more private conversation, you can send direct messages to other twitter users.
Are you ready for advancing your twitter game? Check out Twitter for Scientists by Dan Quintana (https://t4scientists.com/)
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me!